It was an interesting piece by Rick Doehring about Machiavelli’s The Prince, a book famous for influencing world leaders and now President Trump. It has been an influence many times in history, including America’s.
In Thomas Jefferson’s day American ships traveling through the Mediterranean came under attack by Algeria, Morrocco, and Tripoli, with the captured ships and crews then being held for ransom. An envoy was sent to negotiate, asking what were the “ground[s] of the pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury.”
The answer was religious; “that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, [and] whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave.”
Such a premise being unnegotiable, Jefferson prepared some ships, ordered crews to be specifically trained, and sent the newly formed armada into the area to wipe them out. This continued until they gave it up. They wore leather covers around their neck to stave off the simitars, and these “leatherneck’s” policing the “shores of Tripoli” are still here and called the Marines today.
Almost every word of The Prince is instruction to not confuse compassion with protection. Overriding all is Machiavelli’s idea that politics dictate another realm of ethics.
Modern day bullies, such as Maduro plundering his own people, are to be met at their own level. The ethics that prevent evil in your own neighborhood do not equate with what is necessary to combat existing and entrenched evil.
All bullies expound noble and righteous premises, which perpetuates them among the hopefuls and the compassionate. Because it works. It works until a student of Machiavelli’s 600-year-old textbook arrives on the scene and is ready to respond at their level, which Machiavelli details as the only certain way.
Not much is said about the compassionate then reacting to the leader who reduces to the level of the adversary to properly address it, and they then paint him or her as also a bully. Not all will make it to the understanding of what is being done, and to some politics has become a religion of sorts (and understanding doesn’t matter).
But popes, kings and world leaders of all subsequent eras have kept Machiavelli’s writings at “fingers’ end” for guidance, and it is nothing new. Neville Chamberlain found out when meeting with Hitler; Churchill read and sent copies of Machiavelli’s The Prince to friends. Churchill knew the days of negotiating, therapy, alone time, and safe spaces are no match to the ethical rules of the unreformable bad guys. Semper Fi.
